“Piece of You”

Tokyo’s Sapphire Slows (aka Kinuko Hiramatsu) swims through a world of echo on Time, her new mini-album for patten’s Kaleidoscope imprint. Her beats, modeled on vintage synth pop and IDM, cut cleanly through the murk, but her wispy voice dissolves midway between her lips and your ears. Album highlight “Piece of You” makes the most of that contrast. The ultra-vivid production carves sharp lines through the stereo field: Beats snap like a twist of the socket wrench, and a staccato arpeggio flashes back to early Autechre. Hiramatsu’s voice, though, flits around the edges, ghostly and distant, with a breathy tone reminiscent of Kelly Lee Owens or Grimes. But the lightness of her voice belies the weight of her lyrics, which warily circle the shards of a relationship: “Every broken piece of your mind is here in a box,” she sings. “If I shake it out into my tongue, how will it taste?” Leagues beneath her airy soprano, a gurgling acid line comes writhing through the reverb, squirming like a memory of a rave that refuses to fade.